Space for Transparency This blog by Transparency International provides an independent and informed viewpoint on corruption. It gives a space to start a worldwide conversation on possible solutions to overcome corruption, and on governance, transparency and accountability.

Hackers use technology to fight corruption

Watch out! Internet connections worldwide might be slower this weekend! This weekend hundreds of hackers, programmers, designers and anti-corruption experts and activists in Bogotá, Budapest, Casablanca, Jakarta, Moscow and Vilnius will come together this weekend to develop new ICT tools that can help citizens monitor government and report corruption.

Websites like ipaidabribe.com in India and use of twitter in events like the Arab Spring have shown that technology can be a powerful vehicle for people power.

Hacks Against Corruption (HAC) is Transparency International’s first attempt to bring together technology and anti-corruption specialists to use technology to come up with some of the challenges we face in fighting corruption: visualising the cost of corruption, monitoring complex, massive public budgets and allowing citizens to safely report corruption in their life.

What is a Hackathon?

Technology experts such as computer programmers and graphic and designers get together with policy experts (some in the same room, others in different citites) for a “marathon” session of software development.

Our Hackathon will happen with the help of Random Hack of Kindness – a joint initiative between Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, NASA, and the World Bank. It connects software developers who want to share their skills with disaster management workers to create computer software that will help them in their work.

We consider corruption a disaster.

Innovative solutions to corruption challenges

21 Transparency International chapters have submitted 35 “problem statements” – descriptions of the challenge they want technology to solve.

What they most need is secure and anonymous online platforms for citizens to report problems:

TI Azerbaijan will work on an online platform for women to report harassment

TI Montenegro would like to develop a mobile app for citizens to report illegal construction

TI Malaysia plans to have an online platform for citizens to monitor performance of local councils

TI Zimbabwe is focusing on combatting corruption on the Zimbabwean roads.

TI Peru and TI Kenya are interested in using online monitoring tools to enforce accountability in climate governance funds.

TI Slovakia proposed collecting and publishing NGO spending data as well as analysing transparency of the major recipients to create a more accountable non-profit sector.

The third set of “problem statements” aims to make the mountains of data involved in the disclosure of public data (budgets for an entire country, for example) easier for the public to sift through.. TI Montenegro, TI Malaysia, TI Portugal, TI Russia, TI Slovakia will hopefully promote the new generation of Freedom Of Information platforms.

Finally some chapters want to target a specific audience. TI Fiji, TI Hungary, TI Sri Lanka and TI Korea aim to design tools for youth to identify corruption in their everyday life or to provide information about their rights and tools to report corruption.

Read about other Transparency International online initiatives to fight corruption:

The anti-corruption online helpdesk vibor 33 and its ‘map of the region’s problems’ developed by our Russian Chapter and the Lebed movement.

Whatever happens this weekend it seems this joint collective action of Chapters and external partners became an important milestone for Transparency International; we mobilised our movement in using ICT and now a global community as a new audience joined our mission worldwide. We hope this new but challenging initiative will bring us sustainable and innovative solutions now and in the near future.

Carousel image: Flickr/Creative Commons: rhokberlin

Share and enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Space for Transparency

This blog by Transparency International provides an independent and informed viewpoint on corruption. It gives a space to start a worldwide conversation on possible solutions to overcome corruption, and on governance, transparency and accountability.